Way of the Gun (9781101597804)

by West, Charles G.

  It was the first time he had thought about his grandmother in many years. He didn’t recall very much about the woman who gave him birth, for he was only four years old when his mother died trying to give him a younger brother. The baby, a girl actually, didn’t make it, either. His father was hit pretty hard by the loss of his wife and, finding it too much to bear, left his four-year-old son with his grandmother and went back to work herding cattle. So Grandma Ryan raised the boy until she passed away when he was fourteen. With no reason to stay, Carson followed his father into the business of punching cattle. In the three years since he had gone to work for Mr. Bob Patterson, he never crossed paths with his father.

  * * *

  Upon reaching the Beaver, they decided it was still a little too early to camp for the night, so they stopped for a short while to rest the horses before continuing on. “We’ll just follow the river a ways yet,” Red Shirt decided. “We’ve got a good two hours of daylight left, so if we stay with the river, we’ll have a camp with plenty of water and grass.” They had not gone on for more than a couple of miles, however, before striking a fresh trail where a small party had crossed the river. Red Shirt immediately dismounted to study the tracks in the soft sand at the water’s edge. “Five horses,” the half-breed decided, “or four horses and a mule, maybe.” He stood up and looked to the east and the dark mountains called the Black Hills. “They came from the hills, headin’ west. Maybe some prospectors headin’ west with some gold.” His eyes narrowed, hiding the gleam that always came with the thought of a potential victim. “Maybe something to gain,” he announced.

  “More likely some damn jackass that finally gave up and is headin’ for home with his pockets empty,” Tice remarked.

  “Tice is probably right,” Carson quickly commented, alarmed that he might find himself involved in an attack upon some innocent prospectors. “Most likely a waste of our time.”

  Mildly surprised that Carson had offered an opinion, Red Shirt cocked an eyebrow as he gave the young man a sharp eye. “Won’t hurt to take a look,” he said. “Maybe something to gain.”

  There was no point in trying to argue, so there was nothing Carson could do but hope the party was long gone. This hope was crippled when Red Shirt said the tracks weren’t but a few hours old. It gave him a sick feeling inside to think that he might be a part of a robbery, but he resigned himself to the inevitable. It was a waste of time lamenting the fact that he had not made a run for it while they were still camped at Crazy Jack’s.

  The trail appeared to be a commonly traveled one and led them across a low hill, thick with pines. Soon the sun dropped behind the trees, leaving the forest around them to begin to close in as they made their way carefully now. Suddenly Red Shirt held up his hand, directing them to stop and dismount. When the three behind him caught up, he pointed to a glow filtering through the trees ahead. “It looks like a stream up ahead,” Red Shirt said softly. “You stay here. I’ll go take a look.”

  He was gone for about twenty minutes before reappearing out of the darkness. “Two men and a woman,” he reported. “They look like prospectors, maybe. Don’t know what else they’d be, comin’ outta the hills. I don’t know if they’ll amount to much of a payday, but maybe something to gain.” He checked his rifle to make sure it had a full magazine. “We’ll ride in peaceful-like. It’ll be like shootin’ fish in a barrel. They don’t look like they could give us much trouble.”

  “Well, let’s get at it, then,” Tice said, checking his own rifle.

  “What did the woman look like?” Swann wanted to know.

  “Let’s give ’em time to settle down for the night,” Red Shirt said. “Might as well make it easy on ourselves.” He turned his gaze to settle on Carson then and studied the young man for a moment. “No,” he said then, “we’ll leave the horses here and walk into their camp and hit ’em before they know what’s what.”

  “What did the woman look like?” Swann repeated. “She old, young, or what?”

  “Whaddaya care?” Tice scoffed. “When did you get so picky?”

  “Damn it, I just asked,” Swann came back, his hackles up.

  “I couldn’t tell,” Red Shirt finally told him, “just a woman.” Unlike Swann, he was not interested in the woman, only the possibility of acquiring the party’s possessions. “After we take care of the two men, then you can worry about the woman.”

  The bickering over for the moment, they sat down to wait and to anticipate the attack to come, eager to see if their intended victims might be some of the fortunate ones who had found gold in the mountain streams—all except one. Carson was almost frantic inside, caught in the evil web of Red Shirt’s intentions. He could not blindly go along with the savage half-breed’s raid on an innocent party. As he sat waiting with them, he glanced from one face to another, seeing the eager anticipation in both Tice and Swann, and the patient countenance of the calculating half-breed. It almost made him sick inside to know what was planned for the party of prospectors, and the fact that he didn’t know how he could prevent it. He knew that he could not stop all three of them, even if he decided to attack them. But he also knew he had to do something to stop a conscienceless massacre. When it was time to move on the camp, he was handed another setback that he had not expected.

  “All right,” Red Shirt said, “it’s time to go get ’em.” When they all rose to their feet, he caught Carson by the arm. “You stay here with the horses. When the shootin’ starts, we don’t want ’em runnin’ all over hell and back.” From the beginning, Red Shirt had questioned the resolve he read in the young man’s eyes, and he decided it best not to take a chance on Carson doing something crazy in the heat of a gunfight.

  Further distressed over this recent turn of events, he was not sure what he should do. In that moment, however, he decided it was time to pick between right and wrong, and he knew he sure as hell couldn’t side with Red Shirt and his two murderers. Even with his mind made up, he couldn’t bring himself to take the coward’s way and start shooting them in the back. Trying to decide, he waited too long for that opportunity, anyway, for they were already fading into the night. Suddenly he saw his best course of action. He ran to his horse and sprang into the saddle. Raising his rifle, he fired three quick shots into the air, then guided his horse through the trees at a fast lope, riding in a wide circle, thinking to come up from behind the prospectors’ camp.

  The three warning shots brought the campers out of their bedrolls, reaching for their weapons. “Get to the creek bank!” Jonah Thompson yelled. “Nancy! Keep down behind that bank!” He knew he didn’t have to tell his brother what to do; Frank was already running to the creek, his rifle in hand. The first thought by both brothers was Indians.

  Some fifty yards back in the pines, there was equal confusion over the sudden rifle shots. “What the hell?” Red Shirt roared when startled by the shattering of the silence. The three of them dived for cover, thinking the shots were meant for them. “That son of a bitch . . . ,” he started, but left unfinished as he strained to see behind them, halfway expecting more shots to come.

  “What the hell’s he doin’?” Tice exclaimed, thinking it an accident, before realizing, had that been so, there would have been one shot only.

  “The sneaky bastard’s warnin’ them,” Red Shirt decided. “I knew I couldn’t trust him.”

  “Well, what are we gonna do now?” Swann asked while nervously straining to see through the trees behind them.

  “Just sit tight right here,” Red Shirt ordered, his alarm having been replaced by red-hot anger. “I’m goin’ back to take care of that sneaky son of a bitch. I want his scalp on my scalp stick.” He was off then, moving stealthily through the trees. The woods became quiet again, as Tice and Swann were left to watch for signs of Carson. In a short time, they heard Red Shirt’s voice telling them to hold their fire. “He took off,” he told them. “His horse is gone.”

  “
What about our horses?” Tice asked.

  “They’re all right. He just hightailed it outta here,” Red Shirt said. “I’ll run across him one of these days. Then he’ll pay up for this.”

  “Whaddaya think we oughta do now?” Swann asked.

  “Nothin’s changed,” Red Shirt answered. “We’re gonna take whatever they’ve got in that camp.”

  “If you’re thinkin’ ’bout chargin’ in there blazin’ away,” Tice said, “I ain’t for it. Them folks has had time to get ready to give us plenty of lead.”

  Red Shirt paused to give that some thought. Tice was probably right, he decided. They might be running into a buzz saw. “We’ll try to talk our way in first.” That sounded better to Tice and Swann, so they followed Red Shirt’s lead and worked their way in closer. “Hello the camp,” Red Shirt called out. “We’re peaceful folk—didn’t mean to scare you back there—rifle went off when I was puttin’ it away—damn near shot myself in the foot—don’t wanna cause no harm to anybody. Like I said, we’re peaceful, just lookin’ to maybe share some coffee.” All the while, the three predators scanned the clearing before the creek, trying to locate their targets.

  “Yonder’s one of ’em,” Tice whispered when he caught a slight movement along the rim of the creek bank. “They’re holed up under the bank.”

  “Yeah,” Red Shirt said when he looked where Tice pointed. “They’re dug in pretty good.” He knew they had the advantage if he decided to risk charging into them. “Tell you what,” he called out again, “we got off on the wrong foot. Whaddaya say we both come out and meet in the middle of the clearing?”

  “I don’t think so,” Jonah called back from the creek. “I think it best if you just go on down the creek somewhere and find your own place to camp.”

  “Mister, if we was up to anythin’ bad, we’da already snuck up on you,” Red Shirt tried one more time. “We was just tryin’ to be neighborly. So whaddaya say, just me and you to talk it over?”

  Jonah was not a fool, and he had had enough. “Mister,” he yelled back, “you can go to hell.”

  “Damn you,” Red Shirt cursed, fully angry now, more so with Carson than with his intended victims. “We’ve got you outnumbered, and we can keep you pinned down in that creek till the damn thing dries up!”

  “He might be right,” Jonah told Frank. “But I don’t think we’ve got any choice but to fight them.” With that resolve, he laid his rifle on the rim of the bank and fired a shot in the direction of the man’s voice. It was immediately answered by shots from three rifles. The skirmish continued for several minutes with both sides firing blindly in the dark, with no distinguishable targets other than the occasional muzzle flash. Impatient with the lack of any gain, Tice decided to make a run for a bush-covered mound a dozen yards closer, but at an angle that he thought might give him a look at a target. Running in a low crouch, he left the protection of the tree he had been shooting from. Halfway to the mound, a shot rang out and he tumbled to the ground, mortally wounded.

  “Good shot, Frank,” Jonah said.

  Puzzled, Frank answered, “I didn’t shoot him. I thought you shot him.”

  “It wasn’t my shot,” Jonah said. They both turned to look at Nancy, who was still huddled under the brow of the low creek bank. There was no need to ask if she had killed him. “They’ve gotten around behind us,” Jonah exclaimed. “They hit one of their own men.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Frank replied. “It would have been one helluva poor shot, and how come he didn’t keep shooting?”

  “Damned if I know,” Jonah replied while looking nervously behind him now, halfway expecting a second shot at any moment.

  Back in the trees, Swann called out, “Tice! You all right?” But the dark lump lying still between the pines and the bushy mound did not respond. “They got Tice!” Swann exclaimed excitedly to Red Shirt. “He ain’t movin’.”

  “He shoulda stayed behind that tree,” Red Shirt replied, angry enough at the way things were going to pump five shots at the creek as rapidly as he could pull the trigger and rechamber another cartridge. His barrage ended abruptly when a rifle slug kicked up dirt near his foot. Jumping quickly back behind a tree, he proclaimed, “That shot came from that slope behind those people!” It didn’t take but a moment then to realize that Carson had not run as he had first thought. “That son of a bitch has joined up with ’em.”

  “What the hell would he do that for?” Swann asked, truly puzzled.

  “’Cause he’s a no-account, double-dealin’ son of a bitch,” Red Shirt hissed. The young pup had thoroughly wrecked what would have been an easy strike, and cost him one of his men. To add to his anger, he glanced over his shoulder to see a full moon climbing over the dark hills behind them. “Damn!” he cursed again, for soon the moon would melt away much of the deep shadow, making it more difficult to move in on the camp. “Pretty soon it’s gonna be light as day between here and that creek. We’ve got to move up to where we can see what we’re shootin’ at.” He paused to decide the best way to approach them before directing Swann. “Slide on downstream a little ways and work your way back to the creek. I’ll move upstream and we’ll have ’em between us. We oughta root ’em outta there quick enough. Then we’ll take care of Mr. Carson Ryan.”

  Swann was not particularly fond of the idea of moving away from the large tree trunk he had taken cover behind, but he was reluctant to tell Red Shirt no, so he started to inch away to another tree to his right. “And, damn it, Swann,” Red Shirt called after him, “be careful you don’t shoot me.”

  Being a more cautious man than his simple companion, Red Shirt remained where he was until Swann safely reached the second tree. Then he moved slowly away from his cover and crawled to a low mound a few yards away, where he stopped and waited for Swann to leave the second tree and head quickly for a clump of small pines closer to the creek. Swann was a few steps away from safety when the rifle on the slope spoke once more, causing him to reel awkwardly before collapsing to the ground. Red Shirt froze. Cursing himself for not killing Carson when they first came upon him, he decided not to test the young man’s marksmanship any further. So far, it had proven too deadly to challenge. There will be other times, my young friend, he promised himself as he withdrew to the trees once more. Safely behind a tree trunk again, he lingered there for a few moments more, reluctant to leave Tice’s and Swann’s weapons behind. Both men had carried good Winchester rifles and Colt pistols, weapons he could sell, but he knew he was asking for the same ticket to hell they had purchased if he ventured out into the clearing. Damn! He swore to think of leaving valuable weapons for Carson to gather up and make a profit on. That young coyote pup, he swore to himself, and vowed to cut his heart out. In spite of his lust for revenge, he could not risk his body in the now moonlit clearing, knowing that he would be an easy target.

  Backing carefully away from the tree protecting him, he moved back through the pines to the horses, thankful that Carson had not thought to drive them off. He couldn’t say that he would miss Tice or Swann, although they had been useful at times. At least he had gained two good horses and a couple of saddles. It was hard to decide what to do at this point, torn as he was between two choices. His passion to avenge the betrayal by Carson caused him to be inclined to continue to stalk him, looking for a chance to kill him. The downside to this plan was the inconvenience of herding a string of extra horses, and he was reluctant to set them free. In the end, he decided to return to Crazy Jack’s in hopes of selling the horses, extra riding gear, and weapons. Another thing he had to consider was the fact that he was now outnumbered four to one, if the woman could handle a gun, and he never liked being on the low end of odds like those. He scowled and cursed again before finally withdrawing, still reluctant to swallow his bitter loss and slink off into the night.

  Chapter 5

  Not sure what was happening, Jonah Thompson moved a few feet closer to his bro
ther, who was straining to search the low ridge behind them. “See anything back there?” he asked.

  “No,” Frank replied without taking his eyes off the dark ridge, “not a thing. You think it’s a cavalry patrol or something?” They had at first thought the shots came from a member of the party who had hailed them from the edge of the pines, and the shot had accidentally killed one of their own. But when the second shot was fired, killing another of the aggressors, they knew it was no accident. The question was who, and what was their motive? Once the rifleman had halted the attack, would he, or they, if there was more than one, then begin to turn his weapon on the three of them? “You think maybe it’s Indians?”

  Harboring the same thoughts that puzzled Frank’s mind, Jonah said, “Either we’ve got a guardian angel, come to take care of us, or we’re next on his list. But damned if I know which.” He turned his head toward the edge of the creek bank. “You all right down there, Nancy?”

  “I’m all right,” Nancy replied, “but if I could make myself into a tighter ball, I’d be better.” She paused a moment, then asked, “What are we gonna do?”

  Frank looked at Jonah then. “What are we gonna do?”

  “I don’t know,” Jonah answered. “Right now I’m afraid to stick my nose outta this creek.” He paused then, knowing his younger brother and sister-in-law were looking to him to make the decision. “I reckon it’s best not to risk getting shot. I don’t see what we can do but sit right where we are and keep our eyes open. It’s some time yet before daylight. Maybe then we can tell more about what’s going on. If you’ve got a better idea, I’d like to hear it.”